Direct in situ observation of metallic glass deformation by real-time nano-scale indentation

• DOI: 10.1038/srep09122
• Publication Date: 2015-03-16T10:18:04Z
• Authors: Lin Gu; Limei Xu; Qingsheng Zhang; Deng Pan; Na Chen; Dmitri V. Louzgui...; Ke-Fu Yao; Weihua Wang; Yuichi Ikuhara
• Keywords: Shearing (physics); Shear band; Indentation

A common understanding of plastic deformation metallic glasses (MGs) at room temperature is that such occurs via the formation runaway shear bands usually lead to catastrophic failure MGs. Here we demonstrate inhomogeneous flow nanoscale can evolve in a well-controlled manner without further developing bands. It suggested sample undergoes an elasto-plastic transition terms quasi steady-state localized shearing. During this transition, embryonic localization (ESL) propagates with very slow velocity order ~1 nm/s hot matured band. This finding advances our microscopic process associated and may shed light on theoretical development